


Nix

by fraisemilk



Category: Gintama
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Joui War, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3345500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraisemilk/pseuds/fraisemilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It snowed during the day and the sky is pink. You are wounded but it doesn’t hurt. Gintoki doesn’t say anything. He sits on your bed, and you dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nix

_"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?_

_Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?"_

_____________________________________________________

 

You wake up with grey mirages dancing in front of your eyes. Are these clouds of smoke or a spectrum of pain?

Catching your breath, the world is dyed an odd color. It is the color of the blood pounding in your ears and the dark color of the corpses lying next to you.

You wake up and, opening your eyes, you cannot see anything but grey mirages dancing in front of you. Clouds or smoke or pain, you cannot tell. You try to catch your breath, but it wants to fail you. The momentum gives the world a strange color. An odd golden red, like the blood pounding in your ears. It resounds all around you.

Where are you?

You wake up and a putrid smell invades your lungs; coiling up and down around your ribs, it doesn’t want to let you go. You close your eyes.

You wake up. You wake up. Wake up! Wake up! Wake –

You open your eyes and Gintoki is here, eyes an odd golden red.

 

* * *

 

A dream wakes you up. Immediately after you open your eyes, it fades away; you can see, outside the window, grey smoke billowing up towards the sky. You are in the infirmary. There are bandages around your left bicep and around your ribs, but you aren’t in pain. Someone probably gave you painkillers. You remember seeing Gintoki, but you are not certain the memory isn’t from a dream.

You stare out the window. It is nearly the end of the afternoon, by the look of it. The sun is already well ahead on its course, its rays giving the sky a pinkish hinge. There are white patches on the large expanse of the countryside; it has probably snowed during the day. It isn’t cold enough for it to last more than a few hours.

You turn your head towards the entrance when you hear someone shuffle in. It’s Gintoki. He looks tired – dark bruises under his eyes, darker marks that dye his left cheek blue and yellow, leftovers of a battle or of a fight with Takasugi. He isn’t wearing his armor, so you can easily see the bandages around his rib cage when the cloth of his yukata parts slightly and reveals his chest. His sluggish walk gives away sore muscles and most likely a few broken ribs.

He doesn’t say anything; instead, he sits on your bed, and you move your legs to make room for him. Silence stretches like wings, and you’re tempted to go back to your landscape viewing. Gintoki’s stare stops you from doing so. You remember eyes, an odd golden red colour. Maybe it wasn’t a dream, then. Gintoki was there with you. Did he get any sleep at all?

“20 hours.”

“Huh?”

Gintoki’s rough voice takes you by surprise.

“You slept for 20 hours. Your injuries were pretty bad. I thought you wouldn’t come back, for a moment.”

The rest of the sentence disappears in thin air (“But you did” vanishing in Gintoki’s breath).  

“Is… everyone else…?”

“They’re alright. Takasugi and Sakamoto... I think they’re sleeping. We lost only 5 men yesterday.”

Gintoki used to talk much more. He still does, sometimes: drunk, feverish. He screams on the battlefield. In the quiet of the infirmary, close to Katsura’s warmth, he doesn’t say much. He looks tired and defeated (“White Demon”, “Killer”, “Monster”, all distant names, now).

You know what anyone would want you to say (“sorry”, “my bad”, “were you worried?”), but you don’t know what those golden red eyes want. Without thinking, you grab his right hand, which rests on the grey sheets of your bed. He doesn’t recoil, so you keep it, holding it with care, like you would a bird with a broken wing; the palm is warm but the fingers are cold. His skin, rough and calloused. It is soft on the inside of his wrist.

“You?”

Gintoki doesn’t answer right away. He gazes at Katsura’s bandaged bicep, at Katsura’s bandaged chest, at his own hand, then, entangled in Katsura’s hands. Then, simply, he says:

“I’ll be okay.”

You may not know what those eyes want, but you know when they are lying. Things unsaid are still unsaid, but he does seem alright, right now, and you feel tired all of a sudden. You close your eyes, his hand still in yours.

 

* * *

 

You grandmother’s hands are soft. On foggy mornings, when you aren’t old enough to go to school yet, she lets you slip under her cover, hugs you with her warmth, and lets you listen to her stories.

She tells you about the town she is from, about your parents' town, about her parents' town. She talks about the animals in the forest and the trees’ immeasurable memory.

She answers every question, resolves  every mystery.

 

* * *

 

You wake up with grey mirages dancing in front of your eyes. The sheets of your bed cover a part of your face.

You can hear your own breath and then another in the silent room. You look on your left, and you find an odd color, in the middle of the white grey shades. Two round spots of blood, an odd red filled with gold and warmth and sleep.

Gintoki’s eyes close and you watch their color vanish. You watch the blue and the purple and the yellow and the blinding white of Gintoki’s face. Sigh. Breath.

You remember the foggy days of before, before everything; you remember the snow patches and the sky’s pinkish tinge and a wrist’s soft skin. You close your eyes, breathing in Gintoki’s warmth and Gintoki’s odd golden red.

In this quiet silent room that feels very much like a cocoon, you allow yourself to think that you will be okay, today, and you fall asleep.

 

_____________________

 

“ _Douceurs !_

_Les brasiers, pleuvant aux rafales de givre, - Douceurs ! - les feux à la pluie du vent de diamants jetée par le cœur terrestre éternellement carbonisé pour nous._

_\- O monde ! -_

_(Loin des vieilles retraites et des vieilles flammes, qu'on entend, qu'on sent,)_

_Les brasiers et les écumes. La musique, virement des gouffres et choc des glaçons aux astres._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Katsura and Gintoki – this is what their relationship is about, I think. Acceptance and quiet reassuring. Not many words. Hugs, maybe. Warmth, always. 
> 
> The opening and ending extracts are from: “Ode to a Nightingale”, John Keats & “Barbares”, Arthur Rimbaud. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! You can also come and chat with me on tumblr, my username is da-da-daaa !


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